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Updated August 17, 2016: The BBC has announced that MeteoGroup has won the contract for the BBC Weather service, and will fully replace the Met Office in "spring next year."

In a press release the BBC confirmed that the switch to MeteoGroup will "save us millions of pounds."

The switchover to MeteoGroup will mean new weather graphics for TV broadcasts, as well as the BBC Weather website and its mobile apps. The "vast majority" of BBC Weather's TV presenters will continue on.

MeteoGroup is the UK's largest private sector weather company, providing various weather services to Sky, Channel 4, the National Grid, and dozens of other companies and institutions in other countries.

Original story (August 24, 2015)

It's a rainy Monday indeed: after almost a century of working together, the BBC and the UK's weather-forecasting Met Office have parted ways. The BBC will reportedly switch to a foreign weather service later this year—either MeteoGroup from the Netherlands, or New Zealand's MetService.

The BBC has used data provided by the Met Office (then known as the Meteorological Office) since its first ever weather bulletin on November 14, 1922. The Met Office says it will continue to provide severe weather warnings to the BBC, but all other weather data will come from another service.

It isn't entirely clear why the BBC hasn't renewed its contract with the Met Office. The Telegraph is reporting that it's because the Met Office couldn't produce "a good enough mobile app"—which seems unlikely, considering the BBC's own weather app almost has a perfect rating. The more likely scenario is that the BBC, facing continued belt-tightening, needed to find a cheaper option than the Met Office. It's possible that, after 93 years of contract renegotiation, the BBC may have been paying over the odds.

Losing the BBC contract will come as a huge blow to the Met Office, which is currently in the process of building the world's fastest weather forecasting supercomputer. The new supercomputer, which uses the Cray XC40 platform, is expected to be capable of around 16 petaflops (16 quadrillion floating point operations per second) when it reaches full capacity in 2017. The total cost of the system is expected to be around £96 million (€130 million). We don't know the exact topology and/or specs of the supercomputer, except that it'll have 480,000 CPU cores—which probably equates to 32,000 15-core Intel Xeon chips.

16 petaflops should make it comfortably the most powerful weather forecasting computer in the world, and it might just make it into the overall top 10. By 2017, we should be seeing some top-end supercomputers hitting 100 petaflops or more.

In a blog post, the Met Office's operations director, Steve Noyes, made some very despondent remarks about the breakup:

“Nobody knows Britain’s weather better and, during our long relationship with the BBC, we’ve revolutionised weather communication to make it an integral part of British daily life. This is disappointing news, but we will be working to make sure that vital Met Office advice continues to be a part of BBC output. Ranked No 1 in the world for forecast accuracy, people trust our forecasts and warnings."

A BBC spokesperson showed far less emotion about the whole thing:

Further Reading

"Our viewers get the highest standard of weather service and that won't change. We are legally required to go through an open tender process and take forward the strongest bids to make sure we secure both the best possible service and value for money for the licence fee payer."

John Kettley, the former weather presenter, is certain that it's all down to money: "... the Met Office will be gutted by this decision, it is a big loss in their revenue," he said on BBC Radio 4. "One of the big problems over the years has been they have wanted more and more each time the contract has come up for renewal."

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Sebastian Anthony
Sebastian is the editor of Ars Technica UK. He usually writes about low-level hardware, software, and transport, but it is emerging science and the future of technology that really get him excited. Emailsebastian@arstechnica.co.uk//Twitter@mrseb

Well, the British government (and presumably a large proportion of the electorate) clearly want the BBC to turn into a shitty commercial broadcaster, in which case awarding contracts to barely competent suppliers who come in with the cheapest bid is very much the order of the day.

The delicious irony of the Met office failing to offer the cheapest bid: I suggest Cameron privatise them. That ought to make them more competitive!

Funny that BBC said it was legally required to secure the best value for money for licence fee payers. Shame they were not using the same measures when squandering £10million on executive redundancy packages and the failed £100 million Digital Media Initiative.

As a keen cyclist, I make heavy use of the Met Office's forecasts, and, while they're less bad than the alternatives, I'm certainly no misty-eyed enthusiast.

I totally get the idea that forecasting the Welsh weather is really, really hard given our awkward mixture of coast and hills. But if I simply want to know whether it will rain between 0800 and 1400 on Saturday, it's completely normal for the forecast to repeatedly swing wildly between 90% and 10% over the course of a few days. It's even commonplace for this kind of swing to happen in the final few hours before I leave.

Most of my cycling mates wait until the day and simply look at the sky. It's much more reliable than the Met Office.

As a keen cyclist, I make heavy use of the Met Office's forecasts, and, while they're less bad than the alternatives, I'm certainly no misty-eyed enthusiast.

I totally get the idea that forecasting the Welsh weather is really, really hard given our awkward mixture of coast and hills. But if I simply want to know whether it will rain between 0800 and 1400 on Saturday, it's completely normal for the forecast to repeatedly swing wildly between 90% and 10% over the course of a few days. It's even commonplace for this kind of swing to happen in the final few hours before I leave.

Most of my cycling mates wait until the day and simply look at the sky. It's much more reliable than the Met Office.

For what it's worth, you'll still be able to get Met Office forecasts! Via their website, their apps, etc.

If the BBC is "required to go through an open tender process", couldn't the Met Office apply for that tender alongside MeteoGroup, MetService et al? I understand that the Met Office feel that this is a "firing", but from the BBC's point of view, it seems more like "we want the best value", which could still be the Met Office.

Shouldn't the headline read "BBC forced to fire ..." or some such? My impression is that, were it not for the govt. wanting to be seen to be 'fiscally responsible' and forcing the beeb to get tenders we'd still have the status quo. Auntie's own version of the story (link) isn't too much more enlightening - but it doesn't support the narrative implied by a supplier being 'fired'. The Met Office apparently just cost too much - they weren't necessarily any worse than whoever is going to replace them.As others have noted simply going with lowest-price solutions isn't always actually cheaper in the long run, (ask NASA), especially if you factor in the extra cost of tendering, potential loss of quality and the loss to the country by out-sourcing abroad. I'm pretty sure the Met Office aren't deliberately incompetent, and I wouldn't be surprised if, when the tender is next up for renewal there is a clamour to get them back. If any service in the world actually produced forecasts that were statistically more reliable than anyone else then everyone else would 1/ want to know why, and 2/ copy them.

If the BBC is "required to go through an open tender process", couldn't the Met Office apply for that tender alongside MeteoGroup, MetService et al? I understand that the Met Office feel that this is a "firing", but from the BBC's point of view, it seems more like "we want the best value", which could still be the Met Office.

The Met Office didn't make the shortlist because they were asking for more than the BBC were allowed to accept in these new "fiscally responsible" times.

On the one hand, add my voice to the chorus wondering why a relationship between two government-funded organisations is being forced to be expressed in monetary terms rather than in terms of public good. <grumbles>Sodding managers, beholden to sodding accountants, unable to see anything but figures, beholden to sodding politicians, unable to see anything but votes...</grumbles>

On the other hand, I don't get my weather forecasts from the Met Office anymore. I switched to MeteoGroup's WeatherPro app on my phone a couple of years ago. The Met Office were OK, but WeatherPro just gives me a lot more information - very handy if I'm trying to determine whether or not to go for a run tomorrow morning. An hour-by-hour breakdown is very useful.I'm certain that the Met Office could do this. So could the BBC. But at that time, they weren't, so I went elsewhere for my forecasts. It's been fine so far.

Great. I hear the Met Office is ranked #1 in the world for weather forecasting accuracy, so whoever is going to do it instead will by definition be inferior. Seems a bit daft just to save a bit of money.

Yes, he said it wasn't going to be a hurricane and it wasn't. I wish Ars hadn't posted this stupid meme at the start of the article -- it detracts from the point that objectively measured, the Met Office is THE dogs bollocks for UK forecasts (and hence was the BBC).

On the other hand, I don't get my weather forecasts from the Met Office anymore. I switched to MeteoGroup's WeatherPro app on my phone a couple of years ago. The Met Office were OK, but WeatherPro just gives me a lot more information - very handy if I'm trying to determine whether or not to go for a run tomorrow morning. An hour-by-hour breakdown is very useful.I'm certain that the Met Office could do this. So could the BBC. But at that time, they weren't, so I went elsewhere for my forecasts. It's been fine so far.

You can do hour by hour on the Met Office app. The mobile website is better than the app in my opinion and it is easier to see all the info hour by hour.

On the other hand, I don't get my weather forecasts from the Met Office anymore. I switched to MeteoGroup's WeatherPro app on my phone a couple of years ago. The Met Office were OK, but WeatherPro just gives me a lot more information - very handy if I'm trying to determine whether or not to go for a run tomorrow morning. An hour-by-hour breakdown is very useful.I'm certain that the Met Office could do this. So could the BBC. But at that time, they weren't, so I went elsewhere for my forecasts. It's been fine so far.

You can do hour by hour on the Met Office app. The mobile website is better than the app in my opinion and it is easier to see all the info hour by hour.

If you just want UK forecasts, then an excellent Android app that uses the Met Office data (and is far better than the Met Office's own app) is "UK Weather Forecast" by lujop.

Yes, he said it wasn't going to be a hurricane and it wasn't. I wish Ars hadn't posted this stupid meme at the start of the article -- it detracts from the point that objectively measured, the Met Office is THE dogs bollocks for UK forecasts (and hence was the BBC).

No he was not right. Ireland was on full alert to be battered but it skirted the southern coast and missed. I still remember an Irish TV weatherman saying "It looks like its going to miss us.. we can thank our lucky stars for that".So it WAS predicted.The "some people" Michael Fish referred to may well have been Irish forecasters.

The interesting thing is no matter where the forecast comes from it is always a guess and wrong to often to for me to trust...I've had snow on days predicted 3 days before to be sunny and 15C and the reverse more times than I care to count so I just look at the weather report and guess... If it has a lot of clouds probably cloudy, -15 yea probably cold, and so on... And then look out the window just in case...

So I wonder how a supercomputer is going to solve that tiny problem, ie being wrong... Being wrong faster?

Great. I hear the Met Office is ranked #1 in the world for weather forecasting accuracy, so whoever is going to do it instead will by definition be inferior. Seems a bit daft just to save a bit of money.

Yes, he said it wasn't going to be a hurricane and it wasn't. I wish Ars hadn't posted this stupid meme at the start of the article -- it detracts from the point that objectively measured, the Met Office is THE dogs bollocks for UK forecasts (and hence was the BBC).

No he was not right. Ireland was on full alert to be battered but it skirted the southern coast and missed. I still remember an Irish TV weatherman saying "It looks like its going to miss us.. we can thank our lucky stars for that".So it WAS predicted.The "some people" Michael Fish referred to may well have been Irish forecasters.

Michael Fish was right on the specific matter of the hurricane question. The storm was not a hurricane. He never said there wouldn't be a storm. It wasn't predicted to be as bad as it turned out to be though. I slept through it :-D.

Great. I hear the Met Office is ranked #1 in the world for weather forecasting accuracy, so whoever is going to do it instead will by definition be inferior. Seems a bit daft just to save a bit of money.

Well is it hearsay or fact? Only one is relevant.

The Met Office's spokesman claimed they are ranked #1 in the world for accuracy. This page on their website says they are consistently in the top 2: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/wh ... /forecasts and it seems well-supported, although it's not clear by who, so I haven't been able to find a 3rd party source.

Mention of John Kettley immediately gets this earworming its way through my head.

Thanks, Ars...

And so does Michael Fish

And so is Wincy Willis.

[Tangential reminiscence: I grew up in in the town that had the Met Office as an icon before it moved to Exeter in 2004(?). Some lucky buggers got to do work experience there in the IT department when we were at school.]

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

I was wondering the same thing. Here in Australia we have BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) which, as a tax-payer funded agency, provides weather forecasts as a public service, free of charge. I assumed the UK worked the same way.

The more I learn about the UK, the more I realise how different we are.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

I was wondering the same thing. Here in Australia we have BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) which, as a tax-payer funded agency, provides weather forecasts as a public service, free of charge. I assumed the UK worked the same way.

The more I learn about the UK, the more I realise how different we are.

The Australian BOM does have commercial services, but they are catered towards industry (mining, energy, gas, etc), in terms of creating custom forecasts:http://www.bom.gov.au/cws/

So, they do get some commercial funding.

But the general weather data is redistributable and publicly available, as required by the Water Act 2007. Much of the actual content they produce is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence as well.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

They didn't used to, but the government of the day is keen to run them into the ground. This is the government who agreed with recommendations that the BBC was "too competitive", note, and has indulged in such idiocy as demanding that the BBC stop giving out recipes, because it's "unfair" (in some vague, unspecified way).

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

I was wondering the same thing. Here in Australia we have BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) which, as a tax-payer funded agency, provides weather forecasts as a public service, free of charge. I assumed the UK worked the same way.

The more I learn about the UK, the more I realise how different we are.

The same goes for the US. There's the NWS (National Weather Service), which is a part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). All the forecast data they output is free to use as a public service.

A couple years ago, a senator from Pennsylvania decided to introduce a bill that would cut funding for the NWS, and force it to stop giving forecasts to the public except for in certain cases of severe weather. This was because they believed the government (NWS) was unfairly competing with commercial services like Accuweather and The Weather Channel.

The thing is, the NWS is the one that maintains all the doppler radars, the weather satellites, most airport weather stations, and runs the GFS, NAM, and HRRR weather models among other things that the commercial services relied on. So this bill would have effectively prevented the general public from getting their taxpayer-funded forecasts and would only allow the for-profit companies to broadcast them. And even then the funding cut would probably affect commercial forecast quality since they all heavily relied on the NWS data anyway.

On another note, I frequently read the NWS scientific forecast discussions. It's interesting to see that the NWS uses a blend of their own models in addition to the US Navy's NAVGEM, Met Office's "UKMET", the popular "euro" from the ECMWF, Canada's CMC and many others to make a single forecast. They all pool together data and share it relatively openly to get more accurate forecasts since weather is obviously a global phenomenon.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

They didn't used to, but the government of the day is keen to run them into the ground. This is the government who agreed with recommendations that the BBC was "too competitive", note, and has indulged in such idiocy as demanding that the BBC stop giving out recipes, because it's "unfair" (in some vague, unspecified way).

a) The BBC has been paying the Met office for years, the Met office has charged from their data for decades, just as the BBC has charged for things that fell outside their public remit.b) The government didn't demand they stop giving out recipes, the actual quote is as follows:

“If you’ve got a website that’s got features and cooking recipes — effectively the BBC website becomes the national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster. There are those sorts of issues we need to look at very carefully,” George Osborne

The BBC was established to be a national broadcaster, and is becoming a de facto national publisher. Is there a particular need for a recipe website funded by a regressive tax on UK terrestrial television viewers? I fail to see one.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, essentially paid for through taxation.The Met Office is also a public service body, paid for by taxation.

Why is the Beeb paying the Met Office anything?

I was wondering the same thing. Here in Australia we have BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) which, as a tax-payer funded agency, provides weather forecasts as a public service, free of charge. I assumed the UK worked the same way.

The more I learn about the UK, the more I realise how different we are.

Its due to successive governments testing out "alternative" funding models and part privatisation of various bodies. The Forestry Commission for example is part funded by government part funded by schemes they dream up to fill the gap. Whether you consider this good or bad is very much open to debate.

Worst thing about articles like this is everyone blames accountants when in reality it is senior management who make stupid decisions I see it all the time at work. They blame us when all we do is show the impact of there decisions.

Recently we did a budget management made promises to shareholders and now people are losing jobs to hit an arbitrary short term target despite the fact we told them it will cause problems next year but since when do management listen.